Generally, in a canning process in which contents, such as beer, beverage, food, engine oil, etc., are filled up in a can, the can is sealed in such a manner that the mouth of the can body is covered with a can lid to be seamed with each other after the contents are filled up in the can body.
The can lid is manufactured separately from the can body and a plurality of can lids are piled up in a pillar shape to be packed by a packing material. Thereafter, in the canning process, the lids are supplied one by one to the can bodies in which contents are filled up to be seamed with the can body after removing the packing material from the package of can lids.
The applicant already proposed an apparatus which is mentioned in Japanese Patent Application No. 63-322608 as an apparatus for removing packing material which packs can lids piled in a pillar shape.
Namely, the apparatus has a suction mechanism for sucking the package of the can lids supplied to the canning process. The suction mechanism sucks the packing material of the packed can lids to form a slack or loosened section between the can lids and the packing material. And, after cutting the slack section by a cutter to form an opening, a packing material removal unit removes the packing material cut by the cutter from the can lids.
However, in the above mentioned apparatus, there is a problem as follows. Namely, the can lids are easily separated from each other in a feeding process in which the can lids are fed to a seamer after the packing material is removed from the package of the can lids piled up in the pillar shape. If the can lids are separated, the works must be stopped.
The above mentioned problem exists not only in an apparatus for removing packing material from the package of can lids in the canning process, but also in various packing material removal apparatuses for removing packing material from packed goods in various manufacturing processes.